Dad’s Grounding

For thousands of years, eclipses have been harbingers of chaos. Today, on the morning of the full moon, the lunar eclipse, and the American midterm election, I woke with a flash of dream: A card, white background, with enough of a green pattern that I thought of an Irish knot, and the words, in gold, “Dad’s Grounding.”

I didn’t realize the word “grounding” had so many meanings: a discipline for children, connecting to the ground for health benefits, the background for needlework, a foundation, instruction in basic concepts, finding a basis, becoming fully conscious after a psychedelic experience, a ship’s collision with the sea bottom, government action that keeps planes on the ground, connecting electrical systems to the ground, visualizing “roots” into the earth to absorb energy, techniques to bring the mind back to the moment.

But what of “Dad’s Grounding”? My Daddy’s grounding was with the soil and with the Presence of the Holy. That was the Irish Knot that held him firm and secure in the storms of life. Many a time I would hear his voice traveling across the field as he worked the farm, lifted up in songs like “Blessed Assurance,” “Trust and Obey,” and “Will Your Anchor Hold?”

Eclipses warn us to expect the unexpected. When we expect to be knocked off balance, we broaden our stance, feet apart, ready, whether we are in a subway train, a full city bus, a boat in a storm, when facing a fight, or even with toddlers and puppies underfoot. Regardless of the results of American elections, results that the whole world is awaiting, we can ground into the soil and into the Sacred. Dad’s Grounding will hold us. Anchor deep.